


To Love Like a Man

by Seraphique



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 11:00:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19208020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seraphique/pseuds/Seraphique
Summary: “You’ve never even seen a vampire in real life, and now you want to walk right in to the most dangerous nest we’ll probably ever enter?” Maggie asks Beth, her Southern drawl stretching out the syllables.“Absolutely not,” her Daddy says, simultaneously.





	To Love Like a Man

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from SYML's "Body", of which this fic is inspired by. Tags will be updated as the story progresses.

Vampires.

Evil creatures, without a shred of doubt, as far as Beth’s Daddy is concerned. The only thing that is stronger than Hershel Greene’s distaste for the undead is his faith in the Lord.

Beth herself, however, has the strong, and very frustrating, belief that the world is not so black-and-white. She has seen men do terrible things in the name of God; she has heard stories of vampires that did not kill. Oh, how her life would be so much easier, were this not the case.

But there is this, a truth undeniable: Vampires killed Beth’s mother. Drained her of every last drop of blood and left her body to wither on the side of a dirt road. No motive, no trace. A tragedy unheard of in a small town like Floyd, Virginia, with its population of a mere 500.

Annette Greene’s funeral was held on a Tuesday. Beth knows, because she still has the funeral program, her Mama’s lovely face emblazoned on the front. It’s hard to imagine that something so awful, so gruesome, could happen to someone so lovely. Beth remembers very few things from that day. Dusty pink carpets, the artificial smell of flowers. The poorly concealed fear on the attendees’ faces. The heavy, embarrassing smell of whiskey on her Daddy’s breath.

Beth was only 13.

Unbelievably, it sparked the formation of a very small rebellion, a group comprised of 4 individuals. 5, if one included Beth herself, but Beth usually chose not to.

Her Daddy, their founder, is the first. After Beth’s Mama was murdered, Hershel was hellbent on destroying everything undead within his sight, and he extended his sight far and wide. News spread fairly quickly that the west side of Virginia was no longer a friendly place to be a vampire.

The second is Beth’s older sister. Maggie was always the rebellious sort, quick to react, quick to anger. The dark to Beth’s light, and not just in appearance. It didn’t take much convincing for her older sister to follow in their father’s footsteps. It was expected, it seemed like the next logical step in their lives.

The third is an old family friend who returned to Floyd upon receiving the news of Annette’s fate, a quiet forty-odd-year-old man by the name of Richard. Richard was a city slicker, from the buttons of his pressed dress shirts all the way down to the shine of his oxfords. His brand new Audi stuck out like a sore thumb on the few near-barren streets of town. Beth never asked where a man like that acquired a trunk full of holy water, stakes, and bullets blessed by priests. Not that any of those things actually _killed_ vampires, anyways, but he’d provided them with an arsenal to slow them down.

The fourth, their newest, is a boy named Jimmy. Beth met Jimmy when she was a sophomore at Floyd County High School. She brought him home to meet her family for the first time when he asked her to his senior prom. She liked him well enough, if ‘well enough’ could be synonymous with ‘hardly at all’. He was a fine boy, but about as interesting to her as a box of rocks. When he asked her to be his girlfriend after prom, she’d politely declined. Her Daddy must have seen something in him, however, because within a year, when Jimmy turned 18, he recruited him to their cause. If their cause could ever really be considered a real cause at all. Beth still doesn’t know why Jimmy agreed to risk his life for the family of a girl who turned him down, but to each their own.

The fifth, if you _did_ consider her the fifth, is Beth Greene. A girl-- woman, now?-- who has never harmed another being a day in her life. It seemed as if killing wasn’t in her code. In fact, it seemed like quite the opposite. Everything she touched seemed to teem with life. Her Daddy gave up on fully maintaining the family farm a long time ago now, but the few livestock that remained were Beth’s responsibility. And unlike finding the nerve to kill, she was _good_ at taking care of them.

But Beth isn’t 13, or even 16, anymore.

In fact, she’s freshly 18, and her decisions are her own to make. So when Maggie wakes her up because Richard showed up in the dead of night in June to announce that he’s finally found the nest of vampires that killed her Mama, Beth knows what she has to do. She’s about to make the biggest decision of her life, dressed in shorts emblazoned with little panda bears. They’re waiting for her in the kitchen.

“You’ve never even seen a vampire in real life, and now you want to walk right in to the most dangerous nest we’ll probably ever enter?” Maggie asks, her Southern drawl stretching out the syllables.

“Absolutely not,” her Daddy says, simultaneously.

“We leave at dawn. I’m goin’ to try to get Jimmy on the phone,” her Daddy continues, not giving Beth a moment for rebuttal. As if that isn’t the biggest insult ever.

Here’s the thing.

Beth knows that she’s sheltered. She’s chosen to be, really. Never been on a hunt, never even _wanted_ to be. But her life is not untouched by death, and it’s her right to be there, just as much so as Maggie. Certainly more so than _Jimmy,_ for heaven’s sake. It’s not as if she’s inexperienced in combat. Maggie has been training her with various weapons for nearly 4 years now. Beth knows exactly how hard it is to sever a head from a vampire’s body, even when that body is weakened by holy water.

There may have been a time where she wouldn’t have argued, a life where she wasn’t so difficult. Perhaps everything in her life has amounted to this moment, created this Beth, and the way she is, the way she is becoming. But then again, perhaps not.

“Now hang on just a moment,” Beth says. “If you think I’m gonna sit back and allow all the family I have left march into the ‘most dangerous nest they’ll probably ever enter’ without me, you’re dead wrong. If I lose y'all too, and I have to live with the fact that I wasn’t there to help--,” She can feel her cheeks flush with anger and her words tumble from her mouth, unguarded.  “That’s just it, I _won’t_ be able to live with that fact.”

This finally seems to get her Daddy’s attention, the spiral corded phone frozen in his hand, halfway raised to his ear. Even Richard has looked up from where he’s typing away on his smartphone, probably sending emails to some big cheese at some multi-million dollar company.

“She was my Mama too, y’know?” A tear rolls down Beth’s cheek as she says it. It’s not a question, not really. She’s being the most honest she’s been in years. Maggie makes her way over and embraces her, brushing her hand through Beth’s hair soothingly. Maggie was so, so complex. Some days, her sister played the motherly part, and sometimes she trained Beth with a cold, indifferent demeanor.

From where her head is rested Maggie’s shoulder, Beth can see her Daddy sit down, brushing his hand over his mouth. A tick he often did when he was deep in thought, or after he’s had some really bad liquor. Maggie removes herself, gentle.

A silent moment passes between them all and Beth counts her heartbeats to calm herself down.

“Hello?” It comes from the phone still clutched in her Daddy’s hand. Jimmy.

A million different scenarios run through her head, then. One where the remaining members of her family are slaughtered, eaten just like her Mama. One where, God forbid, they are all turned into the monsters they are so bent on destroying, and they come back for Beth. Beth may actually go insane.

“Jimmy, it’s Hershel.” He says, as if Caller ID doesn’t exist. Beth is pretty sure he would still be using a rotary phone if he could. “Calm down boy, it ain’t no emergency. Well, not really.”

Beth can’t hear what Jimmy’s saying anymore because the phone’s speaker is pressed tight against her Daddy’s ear.

“Get everything together. We found them. We leave at first light.” Beth can very vaguely remember when her Daddy didn’t sound so serious all the time. A time when a smile could always be heard in Hershel Greene’s voice. But like she’s said a million times before, things change. His sentences are short, far from sweet. Every word has a purpose, like there’s no time nor breath to waste.

Another moment of tense silence. Richard hasn’t even returned to his emails.

“Yes, all of us. This isn’t up for debate, Mr. McClure.” Beth looks up from where she’s began to pick at her thumb. Maggie’s mouth falls open; Richard’s face maintains its indifference. Beth’s stomach has turned into a butterfly habitat. She thinks she might puke. She thinks she might collapse.

She was going to avenge her Mama.

And, well, that was that.

 


End file.
